Nel cuore afoso di una cittadina del Sud degli Stati Uniti, i Farley cercano di mantenere un fragile equilibrio domestico. Ma dietro le finestre chiuse e le tende logore, si agitano tensioni profonde: matrimoni infelici, maternità ambigue, amori che feriscono più di quanto consolino. La casa stretta – romanzo d’esordio di Evelyn Scott, pubblicato nel 1921 – è un ritratto incandescente di una famiglia sull’orlo del collasso. Con una lucidità impietosa, Scott mette a nudo le dinamiche di potere e dipendenza che si annidano nel quotidiano, tra le pareti di una casa che diventa una prigione, un mostro che si nutre di dolore.

Dudley had been floundering inwardly through the attempt to avoid facing the ridiculous. Watching the harsh bitter line of her lips, he noticed the pulse that swelled and fluttered in her throat. The sight of her pain, for which he was responsible, made him feel all at once very sure and complete. He accepted no burden from it, for he told himself it was a part of her awakening to detached and perfect understanding. He was grateful to himself that he had an ideal notion of what she might be that held him cruelly and steadily against all that she was. He felt voluptuously intimate with her emotions. He could not hurt her enough. He tried to shut out the recollection of her beautiful gaunt body in its almost tragic nakedness. "I don't expect you to understand me completely yet, Julia. One's vision is so warped and tortured by one's desire. All our terminology of good and bad we use in such a limited personal sense. We have to get away from that before we can even begin to function spiritually-to be spiritually at rest. I feel that there are clouds between us, Julia, but behind them is the great sun of your understanding. I believe in that. Say something to me!"